


Honeymoon's Over

by Nyrah, saint2sinners



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Gen, Krogans can't swim, Oneshot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-25
Updated: 2015-12-25
Packaged: 2018-05-09 06:52:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5530052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nyrah/pseuds/Nyrah, https://archiveofourown.org/users/saint2sinners/pseuds/saint2sinners
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stelle is a capable woman, sitting in a nice bar, having a drink while waiting for her husband. While she waits, she thinks about a project she was offered by the distinguished Prothean expert Dr Liara T'Soni. Her quiet contemplation is rudely interrupted...</p><p> </p><p>So if you're reading and enjoying and feel like it, you can always buy me a coffee: http://ko-fi.com/saintandnyrah<br/>Not required but would be appreciated. :)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Honeymoon's Over

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CristalDePhoenix](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CristalDePhoenix/gifts), [Nytemare](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nytemare/gifts).



> This is dedicated to our dear friends, Lenus and Estelle, as a Christmas present and as deep congrats on their marriage. Here are some feels just for you!

**Honeymoon’s over**.

The East arm of the Citadel was a carpet of lights spreading out across the darkness: too neon to be stars, too plentiful to be unremarkable. Buildings and lives built up to support the other wings. It was the primary residential quarter of the great space station and also where the university was located. The great angular towers of opalescent white were a coveted view for many: aspiring youths, alien or human, who wanted to study and learn under the best minds in the galaxy. She had begun as a student there, in time became a teaching aid and then an adjunct lecturer. These days she was in the field more than the classroom and preferred red dust coating her knees and boots to the clean uniformity of a lecture hall.

Running throughout the entirety of the Citadel was the Mobius Lake. Opposite the university, across the lake, was a club. It had none of the jingling flash of the famous Flux or the urban charm of Chora’s Den, but it was popular for everyone in the East Arm’s cityscape. It started with a student’s bar on the ground floor, then a student’s club on the first. Traversing the height of the tower, each floor held a series of bars, clubs and restaurants, each more stylish and more exclusive than the last. The most exclusive, the five star Gallery Restaurant, occupied the top floor in splendour.  
 She was on the twelfth floor Balcony, a cocktail lounge for those lingering over a glass of wine or winding down from a day’s work with a glass of Amasec.  
It was still early and the Balcony was mostly empty. Tall and slim in an elegant blue dress, a woman sat in an otherwise empty corner booth. Her hair fell in a tight plait down her back. She was clearly savouring the Balcony’s chief inducement: a light, clear beverage with a kick like a space-cow. The sweet pop of bubbles her tongue was a pleasing rush with every sip, but as the minutes passed she checked her omnitool several times and sighed again in vexation, turning to scan the bar. Searching for a particular face, she scanned and dismissed two figures skulking up onto the Balcony through a side door… but it was rather difficult to dismiss them prowling over to her table and slithering down on either side of her.  
She tensed subtly, glass to her lips, before taking the sip and carefully placing the glass down. You didn’t go to the furthest corners of the galaxy to hunt and survey the rarest of both ancient and modern geological phenomena without learning to take in the lay of the land - so to speak. One times Kroga: large and grinning; accompanied by one times human: smaller but since his neck looked to be disappearing into over-muscled shoulders, still menace worthy of note. They’d boxed her in, smiling, as if by simply sitting in a public place she’d innocently wandered into an elaborate trap of their manufacture.

She looked ahead, checking to see if she could catch someone’s attention, perhaps a bartender or a waitress. The only person that met her searching gaze was a third figure, cowled hood hiding his face. He was nonchalantly leaning back on the bar with a firm eye on the events of the table, subtly blocking off the booth from view as well, she noted.  
Stelle sighed before speaking up, the tone of her voice clear and crisp in the night air. “I’m sorry guys, but I’m waiting for someone. You’re going to have to find another table or some other company.”

The krogan, his voice the growling bass typical of his species, chuckled. He reached out, picking up her glass and chucking the remains into his great gaping maw. “Nah, we like your company just fine. After all, we been looking for you for two weeks now, Doc. You been a tricky one to find.”

Doctor of Geology, Stelle Petrosiur glanced at the lurid orange Krogan, annoyed. She’d been enjoying that drink. It was too expensive to go tossing into the trash like that. Her fingers itched for her pistol, usually accessible on her hip but now locked in a drawer at home, a supposedly unnecessary accessory when on a night out in the citadel. Illegal too, she noted, eyeing the weapons so blatantly on display. They must have paid someone to let them through the bar’s scanner. “Well if you’d contacted my secretary to make an appointment, she would have let you know I had taken leave. Call her in the morning and she’ll be happy to find an opening for you in my schedule.”

Beside her the krogan reached over, running a large, blunt finger down her bare arm. “Pretty sure you could help me find your opening well enough without her.”  
She didn’t pull away, although the inclination to pick up the now empty glass and introduce it to his eye socket was a sudden, urgent temptation. They were trying to unnerve her, push her into a situation on their terms, under their control. She’d dealt with smugglers, crooked cops and greedy land owners and wasn’t about to be bullied by these meat heads.

At the bar the third man, a human by his size and shape, shifted to lean his elbows back on the bar, hands hanging free. She could feel tendrils of amusement at her…situation from across the room. She wondered if he could hear these creeps somehow, every word they said, or if he was simply reading the tableau of body language and events.  
Beside her, the human who had been silent except for leers - which spoke loudly enough - pulled up his omnitool, a compact iteration on which the holographic interface took up less space than the standard version. He seemed content to ignore them as he fiddled with something via the device.  
“I’m afraid the only _openings_ in my schedule tonight are for my husband. Now if you’ll excuse me.”  
She stood. The krogan’s light touch became steel, enveloping her forearm and stopping her from getting up completely, pinning her with just that limb to the glass of the table top.  
“We’re just getting started here girl. Ain’t got time for you to be going nowhere. Now we’re looking for some help finding a friend of yours. A little birdy told me you might know where she’s hiding. Liara T’Soni.”  
Stelle froze. Doctor T’Soni, a respected Prothean expert, had contacted her a few months earlier, looking for help regarding some Prothean dig site she’d uncovered on Knossos in the Artemis Tau cluster. Dr T’Soni had contacted her asking her help in the excavation process. The site was on a particularly unstable landscape and she had sought Stelle’s expertise in uncovering the ruins as well as arranging the necessary laser drills and labour. Normally she would have jumped at the opportunity, but right then she had her wedding to plan and new husband to enjoy, and had to turn the offer down. She had arranged another expert and the equipment for her friend though.  
She wondered what exactly the Asari had found to warrant this kind of attention. It couldn’t be anything she’d want falling into _these_ hands. She returned the krogan’s gaze. “Perhaps if you contacted her office they’d be able to assist. _I_ won’t.”

The krogan’s grip on her arm tightened, and she felt the squeeze of flesh and heard bones grate. Futilely, she hoped it wouldn’t bruise. He husband would not be amused to see her bruised and she was still hoping the night could be salvaged. She didn’t take her eyes off the krogan, knowing that with his type breaking eye contact was a weakness she couldn’t afford. There was a series of high beeps. The last of which was from her omnitool, not that of the as-yet unidentified human beside her.

She looked away, now less concerned about a pissing contest with the krogan, and stared in puzzlement at her arm. Her tool was closed, but active. Her eyes widened as she looked at what she had presumed was a muscled headed merc in human skin. He looked up at her, intelligence gleaming in his eyes as met her gaze with a small smile. She guessed that that smile was well used to being underestimated. He sent off a message before closing his own device.  
“The beauty of it is Doctor, that you already have. Thank you for your assistance. We’ll leave you to your evening.”

The krogan hadn’t lifted his claws from her arm. The other reached out, brushing back a strand of long agouti brown hair from her face. She jerked away from the human and the xeno laughed. His other hand darted forward and grabbed at her throat even as hers wrapped around the empty glass.  
“I ain’t leavin.’ I still got two things she can help me with. And she’s got the right kinda holes for both.”  
He leered at her and didn’t even the glass smashing the side of his head as she jerked back.  
Stelle braced herself, knowing her best bet would be to use the chair she was in next, calculating if she was fast enough to stand and swing it at the same time. Abruptly, an ethereal blue glow accompanied a rising hum and both mercs were hauled up fast and hard to hit the ceiling of the balcony above. The biotic hum was deafening when mixed with the rush of blood in her ears. She looked up to see the figure at the bar stalk forward, his arm raised and wreathed in the electric blue of an active Biotic. His other hand pulled back the hood to show ice blue eyes and pale wheaten hair. Now that he was standing he was short, below human male average in height, but compact and lithe in build. He quickly crossed from the bar to the outer balcony.

With an almost disdainful flick of his wrist, both Mercs squawked as they were pushed backward, out above open space twelve stories up and over the great body of water below. Another flick and the lift ended. Their terror echoed and rebounded long moments after their physical forms had vanished under the unavoidable influence of gravity, plummeting into the cold of the waters below. A large splash spread out from where they hit the water.  
Stelle leaned over the balcony railing, eyeing the figures thrashing and sinking below. After moment Seth joined her.  Side by side they watched the splash and gurgle of the human trying to keep above water, a desperate and heavy krogan clinging to him like dead weight.  
The anthropomorphic glow of Avina formed, facing the would-be swimmers.  Faintly, over the din of the city, they heard her as a thousand conversations paused to see what was happening.  
_“The waters of the reservoir are not for recreational purposes. Please exit the lake now."_  
" _The reservoir water is the primary source of drinking water in the citadel. Please cease contamination and exit the lake now."_  
_"Warning: C-Sec has been notified of your infraction. Please exit the lake now."_  
_"Non-compliance will lead to arrest. Please exit the lake now.”_  
The melodic cadence of Avina’s repetition was accented by the thrashing and desperate cries of the krogan and the angry, gurgling shouts of the human trying to get the xeno to let go so he could avoid being dragged under.

A moment passed before Stelle spoke up. “Krogans can’t swim.  
The immediate response was definitely laced with a slow sense of pleasure.  
 “I know.”  
Another pause.  
 “Did you think I couldn’t handle it myself?”  
His amusement matched her annoyance. This was supposed to be happy night;  a last night of celebration before returning to the hustle and bustle of their equally busy schedules, her with research and excavations to plan and he with….well she made it a practice not to ask too many details about what he did and who he was doing it _to_ that week. Better she not know. Plausible deniability was a watch-word in their relationship. Still, she wasn’t some fragile, wilting little flower in need of rescue and was irritated that he charged in like white knight, even if deep down – very, very deep down -  a part of her preened at his attention.

Below them the C-Sec officers had arrived and a rescue cable had been thrown to the two below. They flailed at it desperately as the officers slowly began to tow them in, away from the deep centre of the lake.  
“I know.” Seth said again quietly, as if remarking on the weather, his eyes on the events below.  
“I wouldn’t have married you if you couldn’t.”  
He turned to face her, eyes lighting up as they took in the sleek curves of his wife. His eyes drifted along her flesh like a warm touch. She smiled at him, knowing in that moment he was her whole world: that they were each other’s. He reached over to cup her cheek, eyes soft but teeth bared, giving a sharp edge to the grin that appeared.  
“But any man who lays a hand on my wife? That man’s a dead man.”

They both leaned forward with unspoken intent and met in a gentle kiss, a brief touching of lips and souls in the night air of the citadel. There was a hum of biotics and below the croaked calls of the swimmers rose again in panic as the cable snapped. She pulled back, rolling her eyes at her husband with his hand still extended over the balcony. She sighed before chuckling softly. She’d let him have his fun. His dark, twisted sense of humour was one of the reasons she married him, after all.  
“Our dinner reservations are at eight. Don’t be late.”  
She stepped back, tugging at her dress to straighten it as he leaned over the balcony, eyes laughing, flicking his wrist, once more wreathed in biotic blue. Another cable snapped and the man and krogan bobbed under like corks. 

Stelle turned to leave the Balcony, throwing over her shoulder as she did, “I’ll meet you there. I need to call a colleague of mine and warn her to expect company first.”  
There was a subtle, shifting rustle of cloth and she didn’t bother to turn around, knowing he had already vanished.

  
Seth had them in his sights; C-Sec might get the two mercs out of the water, but they’d never see the inside of a cell alive. After all, he had dinner with his wife in less than an hour.

 

The honeymoon might have been over, but they had years of fun ahead of them.

 


End file.
